Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"The number of birds made very little difference. What participants reacted to, in all three groups [ 2,000, 20,000 or 200, 000 birds] was a prototype - the awful image of a helpless bird drowning, its feathers soaked in thick oil". - as Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

"With the Absurd generals watching, the two of them - ostentatiously, in wing signs and sigils scraped in the earth, ideograms that startled me - started to talk." - just to underline that this is East Asia we're talking about.

"In the beginning was each word of Language, sound isomorphic with some Real not a thought, not really, only self-expressed worldness, speaking itself through the Ariekei."

"Even uncared for, a few in each Ariekene litter must survive, and when they emerged into their adult form, woke into Language, would find a city purged of us" - i.e. Language unlike any human language is not learned.

"It would have been an elegant imperial manoeuvre. Counter-revolution through language pedagogy and bureaucracy" - It was (India v. China)

"...jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct, and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort" - is politics now seen like this in the West?

'In Bloom's view, the two concepts of causality [mechanism and intention] were shaped separately by evolutionary forces, building the origins of religion into the structure of system 1" - Kant again?

"We are evidently ready from birth to have impressions of causality, which do not depend on reasoning about patterns of causation." - another one for Kant.

"A capacity for surprise is an essential aspect of our mental life, and surprise itself is the most sensitive indication of how we understand our world and what expect from it." - that's surprising.

"Cognitive strain, whatever its source, mobilizes System 2, which is more likely to reject the intuitive [incorrect] answer suggested by System 1" - so cognitive ease or cognitive strain, which is the teacher's friend?

"The figure suggests that a sentence that is printed in a clear font, or has been repeated, or has been primed, will be processed with cognitive ease" - important information for teachers?

"Our everyday pantheon gone needy, desperate for hits of Ez an Ra speaking together together, fermenting Language into some indispensible brew of contradiction, insinuation and untethered meaning" - I get word rushes, especially from reading poetry, but would I describe them like this?

"The general theme of these findings is that the idea of money primes individualism: a reluctance to be involved with others, to depend on others, or to accept demands from others." - how much of this association is culturally determined?

"They'd always been so focused on using Language they weren't used to learning about it" - I'm the other way around.

"Stanovich's concept of a rational person is similar to what I earlier labeled "engaged". The core of his argument is that RATIONALITY should be distinquished from INTELLIGENCE" - how many intelligent students have I taught? And how many 'rational' ones?

"all variants of voluntary effort - cognitive, emotional, or physical - draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy" - I took years dismembering the pejorative concept of 'will power', please don't let this be a way of revitalising it.

"This matters, because anything that occupies your working memory reduces your ability to think" - so my blind panic when trying to speak Hungarian maybe an effect of not being able to think, rather than a cause of being unable to think.

"One further limitation of System 1 is that it cannot be turned off. If you are shown a word on the screen in a language you know, you will read it - one of the joys of living in Hungary is that I don't have to hear English spoken. One of my fears is that I am reluctant to become fluent in Hungarian because I would have to listen to other people's conversations again.

"They speak by regurgitation. Pellets embedded with ensymes in different combinations are sentences, which their interlocutors eat" - Speak?

"We already knew that people are intuitive grammarians: at age four a child effortless conforms to the rules of grammar as she speaks" - Chomsky, Chomsky everywhere and not a drop of sense.

"Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgements and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language" - in a literate society learning any subject IS learning the language of that subject. This points to the limits to popularising knowledge.

"[It] wasn't by any means the worst thing I've ever suffered, or the most painful, or the most disgusting. It was quite bearable. It was, however, the least comprehensible event that had or has ever happened to me. I am surprised how much that upset me."

"But these were not God's creatures, they were Man's: thoroughbred , overbred, monstrosities." - Man as Creator

"And I love my children, all of them. But do they love me? No, they judge me, they resent me, they think I've crippled their lives, they think I am making fools of them any myself." - these attitudes, beneath parental love , might be reciprocated.

"I am a pluralist. I take from here and there. I use other people's bits and pieces. I use what seems useful. This seems to me pragmatic.It's a good way to care for patients, but it's not a good way to make oneself famous." - yes, packaging is the way to make oneself famous.

"Although Liz does not know it, 1987 is to be the Year of Child Sex Abuse." - I've been wondering when this started in the UK - the media's obsession which pedophilia - this date seems as good as any other.

"More, the principal thrust of Montaigne's essay - that barbourousness is determined by behaviour, not ethnicity - is crucial to Shakespeare's portrayal of the shipwrecked courtiers." Four hundred years later we're still struggling with this one.

"it is necessarie yee delight in reading, and seeking the knowledge of all lawfull things; but with these two restrictions: first, ye choose idle houres for it, not interrupting therewith the discharge of your office: and next, that yee studie not for knowledge nakedly, but that your principall ende be, to make you able thereby to use your office - James I Basilikon Doron." - I'm all in favour of naked knowledge.